If the Dead Could Sing: A Journal in Poetry

By Elvira Borgstädt

Poet Elvira Borgstdt always envisioned growing old in good health, endowed with vitality and strength. After a productive life, she wanted to take her time retracing the ancient steps of Machu Picchu, visiting the Valley of the Kings, and going on a walkabout in the Australian outback. Instead, things took a different turn when multiple sclerosis forced Elvira to re-focus her entire life at the age of forty-two.

Inspiration arose out of illness and brought her back to writing. If the Dead Could Sing is comprised of sixty poems that document the authors journey from the depth of despair to transcendence.

Elvira denies nothing, having recognized the approaching beast with a clear understanding of its brutal path. She turns her gaze away from illness and embraces the moments, details, and unexpected gifts in her daily life. Despite difficulty, she is peacefully assured that in the depth of suffering lies the golden path that leads back to the eternal source from which everything springs.

Elvira Borgstadts powerful collection calls us to the tapestry of living light. As she carefully tracks such imagery and living, Borgstadt wonders if she has the guts to go on, tells of existing through pain, and of when the body dreams. Presciently, she writes As it turns out / in the beginning / everything is folded like paper, and demonstrates how life is, layered into, onto and unto itself. Read Borgstadts If the Dead Could Sing, a reverie and a return.

Susan Scarlata

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480849945

Elvira Borgstädt

Elvira Borgstädt is a world traveler, student, entrepreneur, and poet. Her quiet mysticism is informed by the teachings of the Tao Te Ching and the thinking of Meister Eckhard—a 13th Century Dominican monk, whom she studied in depth while a graduate student at the University of Chicago.

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Copyright © 2017 Elvira Borgstädt

Cover art by author.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-4993-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4994-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017911224

Archway Publishing rev. date: 07/21/2017

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

A. OBSERVATION

New Moon

Across the Room

Metamorphosis

Contrary to Nature

Drought

Upon Reading Verse 6 of the Tao

The Hollow Gourd

The Fawn

A Dragonfly

Tao Harmony

Like Clockwork

Fireflies

My Hummingbird Perches

My Summer Guest Sings the Dawn Away

Rain Lilies

At the Birdbath

Grackles

Autumn

Waiting for